Your Daily Phil: Musk’s gesture and what it means for the next four years
Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we consider how the Jewish communal world will be tested by President Donald Trump’s second administration. We report on Jewish leaders’ reactions to the start of a hostage-release deal between Israel and Hamas, and visit the Israel Educational Travel Alliance’s conference in Jerusalem. We feature an opinion piece by Rabbi Yehudah Potok about the significance of forming Jewish identity around what we value, not as a response to “the haters.” Also in this newsletter: Rabbi Ari Berman, Brian Abrahams and Isidor Cohen.
What We’re Watching
Israeli President Isaac Herzog is in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, where he will be interviewed onstage later today by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. Herzog was joined on his trip by Daniel Lifshitz, the grandson of Yocheved and Oded Lipschitz, who were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists in the Oct. 7 attacks and the latter of whom remains in captivity.
The Israel Educational Travel Alliance launched its first-ever Leaders Summit in Israel this week. (Read more about it below.)
What You Should Know
If the past 24 hours are any indication, the next four years are going to be a trying time for the Jewish communal world as a second Trump inauguration and all that comes with it will push Jewish unity to the limit, writes eJewishPhilanthropy Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross.
Take, for example, Elon Musk’s repeated hand gesture at an inauguration event for President Donald Trump, which was seen by many as a Nazi salute. (He said he was throwing his heart out to those in the audience and later dismissed the allegations of a Nazi salute, saying the “‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired [sic].”)
The stiff-armed gesture brought swift condemnation from progressive Jewish groups — the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Zioness Movement and Democratic Majority for Israel, for instance — as well as career Jewish communal professionals focused on combating antisemitism, such as Dave Rich, the head of policy for British Jewry’s Community Security Trust, and former Anti-Defamation League CEO Abraham Foxman, who noted Musk’s support for German far-right political parties that have Nazi roots.
Some prominent Jewish figures rejected the Nazi salute claim, hailing Musk as a “friend of the Jews.” The ADL called the arm movement by Musk — with whom the group has had significant public and legal dealings over its criticism of him — an “awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” and added that people are currently “on edge.”
“In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead,” the group wrote in a statement on Musk’s social media platform, X.
The ADL’s statement, in turn, sparked outrage among many progressives, who accused the group of turning a blind eye to antisemitism for political expediency’s sake. The Zioness Movement, for its part, said it “vehemently disagreed” with the ADL on the issue, but issued a far lengthier condemnation of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) who said that people could “stop listening to [the ADL] now,” accusing the lawmaker of “using [the Jewish] community as political pawns.”
And Musk’s gesture was just one of several events yesterday that prompted outcry and argument in the Jewish world. See also: Trump’s description of those imprisoned for their role in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot as the “J6 hostages” — a phrase he used while standing in front of Israelis who had been taken hostage by Hamas terrorists in the Oct. 7 attacks.
Such incidents, followed by uproar over those incidents, followed by uproar over the uproar and so on ad infinitum are likely to become routine occurrences — as they were during the first Trump administration — and also likely to sow division and drown out signal with noise, unless the Jewish community can find a way to better handle them. Other than the ADL, no other large mainstream Jewish organizations weighed in on the issue of Musk’s gesture as of Tuesday morning — another potential indication of how the Jewish communal world may choose to proceed: quietly.
Coincidentally, recent opinion pieces by two Jewish authors — from different backgrounds — offer the same prescription going forward: derech eretz, the Jewish notion of courtesy, literally meaning “the way of the land.”
“The word of the year in Israel and for Jewish communities around the world has been ‘unity,’ or achdut,” Rabbi Moshe Taragin, of Yeshivat Har Etzion in the Etzion settlement bloc, wrote in an opinion piece for The Jerusalem Post, likely more about the divisive political situation in Israel rather than about the United States. “In our search for this elusive unity, perhaps it would be wise to start with derech eretz – in the way we speak about one another, especially our adversaries, and in how we interact with people.”
Looking specifically at the situation in American Jewry, actor and activist Jonah Platt decried the lack of derech eretz throughout the election in an opinion piece for The Times of Israel and called for its return following the inauguration. “As we step deeper into this uncharted new year, my hope for our people is that we remember ourselves, our values, our essence; that we not allow fear, as powerful a motivator as it can be, to supersede our higher thinking and holy ethical code,” he wrote. “Let’s hope the Jewish community gets hip to our own hypocrisy, because unlike agreeing on politics, the stability and survival of our lives depend on it.”
BRING THEM HOME
Jewish leaders hail start of hostage release, but stress: We have to get them all out

Israelis, Jews and supporters worldwide breathed a long-awaited sigh of relief as they watched the hostages Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari make their way out of captivity in the Gaza Strip and into the arms of their mothers on Sunday evening. But alongside the joy and celebration, the primary message repeated by both the families of the hostages and Jewish communal organizations was the need to bring out the rest of the remaining 94 hostages and support them, despite the concessions that Israel will have to make for them, including the release of Palestinian prisoners, some of whom have carried out deadly terror attacks, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judith Sudilovsky.
A price they’ll pay: For Jewish Agency Chair Doron Almog, this is a personal issue: In addition to having family members who were killed and taken hostage in the Oct. 7 attacks, Almog lost five relatives in the terrorist attack on the Jewish-Arab owned Maxim restaurant in Haifa in 2003. The Palestinian behind the attack, Sami Suleiman Jaradat, was first on the list to be released in exchange for the Israeli hostages. Despite the fact that two of the four family members who survived the Maxim attack are permanently disabled, they all were willing to pay the price of the release of the terrorist responsible for the attack in order to bring back the hostages, Almog told eJP. “They all agreed that we can’t bring back the dead, but we should do the maximum effort to bring back all our hostages who are still alive,” he said. “That is the view of my family. It is about mutual responsibility of the Jewish people. The spirit of the Jewish people. We have enough time to fight [later.]”
TRIP TRAVAILS
Over 140 Israel travel professionals gather to chart a post-Oct. 7 course for the field

Just as the Israel travel field was getting back on its feet following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Oct. 7 terror attacks and resulting 15 months of war ground the industry to a halt, in light of growing security concerns and a substantial increase in ticket prices. To help the sector recover, this week the Israel Educational Travel Alliance organized its first ever Leaders Summit, bringing some 140 representatives from more than 100 member organizations to Israel to discuss the future of educational Israel travel programs in the aftermath of Oct. 7 and how the field can assist in Israel’s economic recovery. The IETA also pledged to increase the number of participants in education Israel travel this year to 53,700 participants, up from 35,500 in 2024, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judith Sudilovsky from the opening dinner of the summit in Jerusalem.
Take a step back: “We’re here to figure out the next chapter together,” Anna Langer, IETA acting executive director and vice president for North America-Israel strategies, told eJP. “The purpose of our summit is to help us open up our eyes to the potential. We’re here to have a ‘balcony experience’ and see how… to take a step back and see all of the pieces and try to create what [we] are seeking by thinking intentionally and designing with what is rather than what [we] wish was right. We are here to outline together the direction and the content of Israel educational travel opportunities in 2025 by doing what we ask [travel program] participants to do: We are going out and having experiential Israel education opportunities.”
BERMAN’S BENEDICTION
Yeshiva U president at Trump’s inauguration: ‘Hear the cry of the hostages’

Wearing a yellow hostage pin, Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, delivered a benediction yesterday at President Donald Trump’s inauguration, in which he prayed to God to “guide our schools and campuses which have been experiencing such unrest,” reports Haley Cohen for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider. Referring to the implementation of a cease-fire and hostage-release deal agreed to by Israel and Hamas that started on Sunday, Berman said, “We are so thankful for the three young women who yesterday returned home and pray that the next four years bring peace to Israel and throughout the Middle East.”
Time for universities: Berman became the second Orthodox rabbi to ever give a prayer at a presidential inaugural, following the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Marvin Hier at Trump’s first inauguration in 2017. A Yeshiva University spokesperson told JI ahead of the inauguration that “at a time of great disruption on college campuses, Rabbi Berman will be the only university president delivering remarks during the ceremony and will speak to the aspirations of faith-based and values-driven universities across the nation.”
Read the full report here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.
KNOW THYSELF
How Jewish identity is formed matters

“Strong identity formation, through exploring cultural narratives and fostering self-awareness, grounds young folks in the resilience and moral courage needed to stand up to antisemitism and all forms of hate,” writes Rabbi Yehudah Potok, senior director of the Jewish Education Program at Facing History and Ourselves, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “But generating and growing an identity based on a negative — like how others have tried to destroy you — is harmful.”
A different approach: “We need to avoid the pitfall that Yair Rosenberg, in his Atlantic article ‘How to Learn About Jews From Jews, Rather Than The People Who Hate Them,’ points out: that ‘focusing on the negative ways that outsiders misrepresent Jews has the unfortunate effect of shrinking the Jewish experience to the hampered horizons of their haters. In actuality, Jews are a proud and diverse people who have thrived for millennia, and whose collective experience is far richer than simply surviving oppression.’ Rather than learning about the Holocaust, which is now mandated in over 25 states, what would it look like for these states to instead mandate teaching about what it means to be Jewish and expose U.S. students to a people that make up less that .2% of the world’s population and yet have contributed so much throughout history?”
Worthy Reads
The Price We Pay: In The Times of Israel, Sherri Mandell reflects on the impact of the hostage deal, which will release convicted terrorists, on the family members of their victims. “The hostages need to be released, and most of us are not naïve about the price. We know that we cannot bear for our people to be hostages in Gaza, but we also know that the price we have to pay is unbearable. The price is what created Oct. 7 because of the previous release of Sinwar in the Gilad Shalit deal, and the price is one that other Israelis will have to pay in the future because terror will continue. The price is another Israeli family knowing that their world has been destroyed. The price is the fact that, in terms of this hostage deal, we are at the mercy of Hamas. I’m glad that my son’s murderers were not found. I would be terrified that I, too, would receive a phone call telling me they were letting out Koby and Yosef’s killers. I too would ask Koby’s forgiveness — a murderer of children set free. But what does that say about justice in this country? How can we pretend to offer justice to the families of terror victims, when that justice is temporary?” [TOI]
Home Away From Home: In Haaretz, Hilo Glazer and Tal Alon spotlight the efforts of one Israeli couple — with help from the Israeli government — to create a network of communities for ex-pats in Europe. “What started, in the autumn of 2017, in the form of small Sabbath eve meals in the living room of a young, energetic couple, Tehila and Netanel Darmon, who arrived in Berlin from the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin, has become a thriving enterprise. It has already expanded to five other European cities under the auspices of a nonprofit called Israeli Community Europe, or ICE, an umbrella organization that is involved in financing and managing Zusammen-type projects. This unique initiative meets the diverse communal needs of Israelis in Europe that previously went unheeded, or, at best, were dealt with by small, unorganized volunteer groups. For its part, ICE — in which the Darmons also hold top executive positions — is fomenting a major change, which can even be termed historic, in the way Israelis communities overseas become organized and operate.” [Haaretz].
We Can Be Heroes: Decades of research indicates that effective disaster management requires mobilization of “community resources far beyond official channels,” write Tricia Wachtendorf and James Kendra in The Conversation. “There is no mechanism to quantify the full extent to which a neighbor or a complete stranger helps someone flee from peril. Yet when people are trapped and minutes count, research shows it is family, friends and neighbors who are already on the scene and are most likely to save lives. It’s often everyday citizens who also take on immediate tasks such as debris removal. Providing a phone, a car, a place to do laundry, or a little bit of elbow grease can fill a gap and let firefighters and other formal responders focus on critical operations… Survivors of the Los Angeles-area fires face years of confusing and frustrating recovery tasks ahead. Offering help after the immediate threat has passed — particularly skilled help, such as experience in construction or expertise in managing insurance and FEMA paperwork — is just as important.” [TheConversation]
Word on the Street
The San Diego Union-Tribune spotlights a collaboration between the California city’s Jewish community and its Israeli sister city, the Gaza-adjacent Sha’ar Hanegev region, to design a new community center for the latter, as part of the reconstruction efforts for the area, which was among the hardest hit in the Oct. 7 terror attacks…
In one of his first acts in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that ended sanctions issued by the Biden administration against Israeli settlers responsible for inciting violence and instability in the West Bank…
Brian Abrahams has been appointed vice president and chief advancement officer for Democratic Majority for Israel…
A new report by the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel found that there was a 340% increase in total antisemitic incidents worldwide in 2024 compared to 2022 and nearly twice as many as in 2023…
The United Nations announced a plan to combat rising antisemitism, including the formation of a working group to evaluate efforts to combat antisemitism and mandatory antisemitism awareness and Holocaust education programming for all of the organization’s personnel; U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt praised the move and called on the U.N. to “demonstrate its full commitment to its human rights mandate and take concrete steps that will lead to tangible progress”…
Ireland announced its support for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism…
The only two Jewish members of the police force in Trenton, N.J., have filed legal actions against their workplace, alleging separate incidents of antisemitic harassment…
A Nashville, Tenn., man was arrested for criminal trespassing after he donned a costume stereotyping Orthodox Jews and entered the Nashville Jewish Community Center, asking to see a rabbi…
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese convened the country’s Cabinet earlier today in response to an overnight attack on a Sydney childcare center located near a local synagogue; police in the country are investigating whether??“overseas actors” are paying locals to carry out the attacks…
Just before leaving office, President Joe Biden declared that the Equal Rights Amendment should be considered ratified, though it’s unclear what practical effect that will have. Nevertheless, the National Council of Jewish Women hailed the pronouncement, calling it “a victory for women and girls and for anyone who has ever been denied opportunities or basic dignity because of their gender”…
Biden also appointed 12 new members to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, including former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff; Matthew Segal, the co-CEO of ATTN; Ron Klain, former Biden chief of staff; Susan Rice, former Biden domestic policy advisor; and Jon Finer, deputy national security advisor in the Biden administration…
The city of Miami named a street for Isidor Cohen, one of its first Jewish settlers who also played a key role in promoting ties between the Jewish and Black communities…
The Jewish Journal examines the efforts of the food insecurity nonprofit Our Big Kitchen Los Angeles as it has been delivering over 1,000 meals daily in the wake of the city’s wildfires…
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass tapped former LAPD Commissioner Steve Soboroff to head rebuilding efforts in Pacific Palisades, Calif., following devastating wildfires…
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon received an $80 million bonus to stay on at the investment bank for an additional five years…
Former Village Voice editor-in-chief and publisher David Schneiderman died at 77…
Judith Gold Bloom, a Northern California-based Jewish women’s rights advocate, died on Jan 8 at 80…
Jewish Canadian philanthropist Dianne Kipnes died in Edmonton, Canada, on Dec. 26. at 81…
Rabbi Alvin Sugarman, the longtime rabbi of Atlanta’s The Temple and civil rights activist, died on Jan. 17 at 86…
Pic of the Day

Israelis gather on Sunday evening in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv to watch as the first three hostages — Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari — are released as part of a cease-fire deal between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group.
Birthdays

Writer specializing in modern Judaism and women’s issues, Blu Greenberg…
Philanthropist, co-founder and chair emerita of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Lynn Schusterman… Owner of the NHL’s Boston Bruins and chairman of Delaware North, a global food service and hospitality company with 55,000 employees, Jeremy Maurice Jacobs… Literary critic, feminist, writer on cultural and social issues, Elaine Showalter (born Elaine Cottler)… Retired Israeli ambassador to Cyprus, New Zealand, Turkmenistan and Estonia, Shemi Tzur… Israeli visual artist, he taught at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Arts for 30 years, Zvi Goldstein… Attorney General of the U.S. during the Obama administration, now a senior counsel at Covington & Burling, Eric H. Holder Jr.… Actor, director and producer, he is the voice of Beast in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Robby Benson (born as Robin David Segal)… Past chairman of the Zionist Organization of America and chair of the real estate group at the NY/NJ law firm of Sills Cummis & Gross, Mark Levenson… U.S. Senator (R-ND), Kevin Cramer… Chairman and CEO of Norfolk, Virginia-based Harbor Group International, Jordan E. Slone… Executive editor digital at the Washington Monthly, Matthew Cooper… Chief operations officer of OneTable, Andrea Greenblatt… Senior fellow at the USC Annenberg School, Cindi Leive… CEO at C-SPAN, Sam Feist… President and CEO of The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, Rachel Garbow Monroe… Director, producer and screenwriter of films, best known as the producer or director of the eight films in the “Paranormal Activity” series, Oren Peli… Christian Zionist, television host and presenter of The Watchman sponsored by Christians United for Israel, Erick Stakelbeck… Dean of School at Yavneh Hebrew Academy in Los Angeles until last year, now CEO at Shpait.AI, Shlomo Einhorn… Peruvian model and TV host, she represented her country in Miss Universe 2009, Karen Schwarz… D.C.-based staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, Jennifer Haberkorn… Israeli actress, screenwriter and filmmaker, Romi Aboulafia… Deputy administrator at HHS’s Health Resources and Services Administration, Jordan Grossman… Samuel Z. Eckstein…